Boy player is a common term for the adolescent males employed by Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the mainstream companies and performed the female roles, as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others worked for "children's companies", in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys.
Read more about Boy Player: Boys in Adult Companies, Children's Companies, Responses, Famous Boy Players, In Film, Literature and Theatre
Famous quotes containing the words boy and/or player:
“Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever—whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman—a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)